Handheld communication devices including satellite phones, CB radios, and walkie-talkies are widely used in controlled and variable environmental conditions to establish communication between at least two parties. Environmental conditions are out of the control of the user and often impact the reliability of transmission while using handheld communication devices. Examples of detrimental environmental conditions are wind, rain, electromagnetic fields, fog, dew, dust, sand, living organisms, plant matter, and many other conditions. The physical designs of handheld communication devices are optimized for the hand of the user and often require the user to speak into the device in a different orientation than when the user is required to listen for sound emitted from the device. Similarly, the handheld communication device may be wearable or attached to a fixed object when not in use. These simple changes in orientation, environmental conditions, and accumulation of debris can cause confusion, change in the user's ability to clearly hear sounds emitted from the device and take the user's attention away from the task at hand.
In operation, a user typically initiates the use of handheld communication device by depressing a button, switching a switch or speaking voice commands recognizable by an internal processing unit into the microphone portion of the handheld communication device. If the user can not easily locate the switch or button the consistency of clear transmission is reduced greatly. It is desirable, therefore, to have a housing or cover for handheld communication devices that directs the user's appendages to consistently depress, touch or switch buttons or switch that initiates communication. Similarly, if the user can not clearly communicate a voice command to the internal processing unit of handheld communication devices then repetitive, incomplete or incorrect communications can be made.
Two-way radios may need to be used in noisy environments, such as in the locomotive of a train or by the operator of heavy equipment such as tractors, wrecking balls, and cranes. The operators of the equipment may need guidance from those that are closer to a particular event or for other reasons to have a better view or have more information related to one or more consequences of the operations of the equipment. Consequently, it may be important that the operator of the heavy equipment be able to hear a two-way radio, via which the operator of the equipment receives communications from another worker that is monitoring the effects of the operations. However, due to the noise of the environment, the operator may not hear the two-way radio, and not know to stop or alter the operations currently in progress. For example, a train operator may run a red light, if the red light is not visible soon enough and the train operator does not hear his/her two-way radio.